Creative Stage Under-monitor Soundbar — GameTyrant

Aesthetics and Build Quality

As with all of Creative’s latest offerings, everything looks slim, sleek, and minimal. Out of all of their audio offerings recently, I would say that the Stage is definitely the most minimal and without any RGB or fancy lighting, I feel this unit is more designed and definitely reflects a desire to be barely noticed, under a monitor, or HDTV. This is definitely a good thing for those who don’t need every flashing, rainbow colored RGB style speaker in their bedroom, living room, den or even kitchen. I love the design and the build quality while light in weight, is extremely solid.

Specs and Audio Quality

Now for the meat and potatoes of why we even buy these type of systems: How does it sound?! Well, I’ll be the first to admit, I had very low expectations for this unit mainly due to the lack of weight in the speakers and subs. My main gaming display for consoles has been a 42” Panasonic Plasma (Yeah, daddy likes his solid blacks and vivid colors) so temporarily, I was just using the decent but tiny built in speakers. Much to my surprise, after hooking PS4 Pro up to the Stage, I was instantly blown away with a room-filling, bass filled sonic blast that completely took me by surprise. How so much sound comes from this unit is a sheer marvel.

Stunned, I thought I’d push the unit to it’s limits. Even though the volume goes from 1-35, anything above 25 was absolutely booming and my grumpy old gamer ears couldn’t take much more. While the bass isn’t the tightest and mids are lacking, overall, the audio quality was much better than ever expected. Also, the option of HDMI, optical, stereo, and Bluetooth inputs is just super convenient.